No. 56, The $7 Three-Item Combo Plates at Yu's Garden

This is not Panda Express. There is no Orange Chicken, no Kung Pao anything. Sweet and Sour? Forget about it. Instead there is chicken mousse wrapped in deep fried tofu skin; bone-in basil chicken in sauce-lacquered pieces; soy-simmered minced pork, the kind that you top rice with; and a mapo tofu that harbors stinging hot peppers hiding between the custardy curds.

Since I ordered the three-item combo plate for $7.08 (tax included), when I asked for the latter, I almost thought they were making a mistake. They ladled the stuff into a quart-sized container until it was practically full. Any place else would have slopped it on into the same foam box as the rice. Not here. They are intent on giving you more than you expected and paid for. (The non-soupy items do get put into the same box as your other items).

It puts those shallow Panda Express take-out foam containers to shame. I'll go out on a limb in saying that Yu's three-item combo is the most massive food pile you can buy for $7.08 in OC. It's able to feed at least two people. And unlike Panda Express' (which, for the record, I actually like), there's real vegetable dishes here. I like their hearty stalks of Chinese broccoli; the invigorating bittermelon; and the simplicity of stir fried spinach and mustard greens.

In a town like Irvine where there's not a lack of cheap Chinese food, Yu's isn't just the cheapest, but probably the best of the cheapest.